Combien de Temps
by ricebol
Summary: Good faith, bad faith, dead worlds, fake gods, and what happens when you stop believing in yourself. Four, Sarah.
1. Darkness and Deaf Gods

_**Summary:**__ Good faith, bad faith, dead worlds, fake gods, and what happens when you stop believing in yourself.  
**Notes:**__ Title translates loosely to 'how much time'. This is my attempt at a multi-part story, with a plot, that does not tie into any existing episodes/plot holes/missing scenes.  
**Rating:**__ T for one minor swear, and morbid themes/disturbing imagery later on.  
**Characters:**__ Four, Sarah, OC.  
**Disclaimer:**__ There are things here that are owned by the BBC. I do not own these things._

* * *

**combien du temps**

It was cold.

He was used to it by now; Cold was one of the constants, like silence and the dim half-darkness of twilight and boredom. There was no measure to time without ticking clocks or a passing sun, and there had been no clocks for a very long time, no difference in the light to indicate day passing on into night. Hundreds of years? Or thirty seconds?

An oily blackness crawled up behind his eyelids, whispering in a voice like rotted straw, instructions, unwilling truths, assurances that drank like poison. He gave in to it, falling into someplace deep and dark, a place where he could pretend to exist, pretend that he had breath to stir the dust motes or a beating heart to break the silence.

This was all very normal, very regular, the clockwork of his existence, now. This was, he supposed, what it meant to be dead.

**.o.**

An explosion from the center console ripped the Doctor's veneer of false confidence to shreds as the room pitched and bucked, the lights failing and sparks running along the controls everywhere he touched them, chasing him around the console as he struggled to find the right button or switch, to route around the problem or initiate an emergency landing or just bloody _something_, anything to get them out of immediate danger, deal with the consequences later…

"I suppose," he said loudly, over the din of combusting circuitry and alarms and the faraway tolling of cloister bells, "I should have said that I had the situation _mostly_ under control."

Sarah clung to one edge of the console, white-knuckled in the flickering lights, and there was not a trace of even the driest, blackest humor on her face. "We're going to crash. Probably die. And your jokes are getting worse."

"Crash and die, nonsense. Come now, do have a_ little_ faith in me," the Doctor chided, ducking around and reaching across in front of her to pull another switch, then three buttons in quick sequence. He moved on away from her to reach to a bank of levers just under one edge of the console - moving fast, faster than she'd ever seen him. He wasn't laughing at the joke either.

There was no response – just a breath-holding moment, Sarah tightening her grip on the console and pressing her eyes shut, the Doctor still in a furious blur of motion around the console, hitting controls at complete random now, frantic and lost for options –

And the TARDIS settled out of the vortex and onto dry land with an anticlimactic, if wrenching, thud. A moment of tentative, hopeful silence – then the controls under the Doctor's stilled hands exploded.

**.o.**

There was a noise suddenly, from Outside, and it drew him back to the surface of consciousness like a rusty hook on a rusty cable, grinding its way through the muck with explosive insistence and leaving him blinking and confused in the shimmering half-light of his waking world.

The voice that came was the kinder one, the one that sounded like warm honey seeping between the cracks and crevasses of his brain. _Wake up_, it said. _There are people coming. If they find you, you'll have to start over. You'll have to start the pattern again, from the beginning. Do you think you could do that?_

That made no sense. People couldn't see him and he couldn't see them – they came and went all day, walked through him and around him with a chill of presence but no physical signs of passing. People couldn't find him unless… unless they were dead, too. Maybe that was it. Maybe they were others like himself, come to steal away his mind and his progress, to get a head start on the peace that he knew wasn't far away now, not long now, and they couldn't take it from him, not this close to the end. It wasn't fair.

_No,_ the voice said. _It isn't fair. You might have to strike first, to protect what's yours._

He shivered in the cold, and waited.

**.o.**

He kept a fire extinguisher on board. Sarah ran that thought over and over in her mind, but it somehow refused to take root. She'd never seen the console on fire like that, didn't realize metal could burn, was completely unprepared for the smell of something very much not-metal burning just under the shining surfaces to hit her in the face only seconds after they'd managed to land. Something alive, and screaming, as it burned.

The Doctor didn't say a word as she doubled over on the decking, body heaving with revulsion for all that she'd had no breakfast this morning for it to bring up – just made sure the fire was out, set aside the spent extinguisher, and folded himself to perch on the balls of his feet next to her, one hand settling on her back.

He kept a fire extinguisher on board, and _handy._ This had happened before. She almost wanted to laugh, breath hitching around her stomach's betrayal in something like a strangled sob. What was that _smell_? Could it really be what she thought it was?

"We're all right, Sarah," he finally said, hand rubbing small circles on her back, supportive and soothing. "Just breathe."

"Don't want to," she managed to choke out. "It's like… something dying."

The Doctor tilted his head up to regard the darkened room, sparks jumping sporadically from one control to another, faint lights blinking out diagnostic patterns as the ship began piecing itself back together. The light from the time rotor reflected eerily in strained and empty eyes, when she dared to glance up at him. He looked like he was listening to some faraway voice that she couldn't hope to hear.

"No, she's not dying," he finally replied, eyes still fixed on the room around them. "Not in good shape, by a long shot. But not dying, I made sure of that." A forced smile, all teeth and uncertainty, as he looked back down to Sarah. "I do occasionally live up to my name, you know."

"What happened?"

The Doctor frowned, thoughtful. "Well obviously we've…" Another glance around the room, then he pushed one hand into his hair, as if shocked and disconcerted by some realization. And he was. "…you know, I don't honestly know."

Sarah did laugh that time, a harsh, short bark of absurdism and weariness as her bearings came back to her. "Let me guess. Only one way to find out?"

He nodded, hesitantly, curly hair bobbing round his head. Sarah could swear it was singed in places. "Something reached into the vortex and tripped us into falling through time. Personal motivations aside…" And they were hard to put aside, as he glanced around the room again, at the chaos and the damage and his poor beautiful ship hanging onto life only because he'd been _just_ fast enough with that extinguisher. "…Anyone with that sort of technology and a tendency to be that terribly impolite about it really does need to be stopped." Eyes narrowed in second though. "Or at least talked to."

"Sure," she said, rocking back onto her heels and pulling herself to stand; he followed her with considerably less effort. Her voice was rife with sarcasm, but it was playful, and that was a good sign. "Let's just sit them down for tea. Ask them politely why they tried to kill us. That ought to work wonders."

**.o.**

_No, _the ragged straw-voice insisted, the sound echoing in empty spaces. _This is right. You don't deserve peace any more than the others did. They're coming to take away something you never earned. You should let them. It might redeem you._

_Hasn't he earned it?_ asked the honey-voice, petulant suddenly, seeping out one of his ears to drip heavily into the gravel, make it shimmer with gold. If he had ears anymore. He didn't, he thought. They had to be somewhere in orbit by now. _Haven't we held him here long enough?_

_No. No, we haven't._

**.o.**_  
_

"All right then, where are we? Or do we not know?"

The Doctor shook his head, standing over the scorched and silent console. "We don't know," he conceded grumpily, pressing a few buttons with no useful result. "The radiation and atmospheric sensors are passive, thankfully. So we do know that stepping out the door won't kill us."

Sarah turned to eye the doors in question, unused to seeing the white and metal-bright room in such darkness. Flick of the switch and they came open on their own. "Wait," she said, hesitating. "Shouldn't we fix the TARDIS first?"

The Doctor was already halfway to the door, pulling his hat from the miraculously still-upright coat stand. "She'll fix herself, given enough time. The damage is too far into the organics; nothing for it but to let her heal. Come on," he said, grinning widely under the brim of his hat. "New world to explore."

"Mad scientist and/or petty tyrant and/or old enemy to topple," she added cheerily as she joined him, composure much improved now that the console room had ceased smelling like a charnel house.

Too bad that that was exactly what the landscape looked like, when they stepped out into it.

* * *

**tbc.** _(c) ricebol 2007 _


	2. Into the Aftermath

The Doctor figured, when he had time enough to think about it on the odd day that wasn't spent foiling alien invasions or running from bobble-headed monsters, that he'd seen an awful lot of things. That being the point of traveling, it wasn't exactly surprising – but his journal had filled up shockingly fast and generally speaking, if it existed, he'd seen it. That still left room for surprise with the things that didn't actually exist and, in a 26-dimensional universe in a state of constant temporal flux, those were more common than a person might think.

Some of his carefully catalogued memories and scribbles were wonderful, brilliant, life-affirming and stupendous. Marvelous. Fantastic - and it really did say a lot about a people that their language contained hundreds of words just to express various minutely different connotations of 'good'. Such a positive people on the whole, humans.

But there were hundreds of words for 'bad' too, and some of the things he'd seen had been simply dreadful. Dying stars, planets at war, cultist murders, power plays with entire populations as bargaining chips. Nestene. Cybermen. One genocidal Dalek invasion after another. He'd seen a _lot._

Nothing like this, though.

He felt rather than saw Sarah pull herself closer in to him, grab a loose hold on his jacket; he put his arm over her shoulder, holding on reassuringly. "Terribly impolite indeed," he breathed quietly into the carnage, both of them rooted to the spot.

It would have been a beautiful planet, all other things being equal. Violet-blue sky without a trace of pollution, the sun young and hot and impudent as it chased the horizon. No clouds. The air hung still and stagnant, unshifting over the cracked red sand. No plants, no insects, no animals – a brilliant sort of desolation.

But all other things were not equal.

Around them, amongst the wreckage of buildings and vehicles and the pitted, torn up concrete of some sort of road system, metal girders and signposts twisted beyond recognition, everything blackened and scorched, were bodies. A lot of bodies. Humanoid, vaguely reptilian, ash white and frozen in positions of terror and pain, twisted and contorted where they'd fallen. Piled to the horizon. Intact.

"This just happened," Sarah muttered to herself, morbid fascination preventing her from looking away. Something that sounded like common sense started whispering in the back of her mind – _Danger_, it said.

The Doctor just shook his head, in sadness or argument, then broke away from her, kneeling to examine one of the bodies.

Sarah did look away then, out of some strange mishmash of nerves and respect and aversion to the ghoulishness of getting close to corpses. "We got here too late," she muttered, pushing her hands into the pockets of her short jacket. They were words usually associated with shock and panic but she had neither; she was just stating a fact. If they'd gotten here a little sooner, they could have stopped this. They always got there in time to prevent these sorts of things – what's the point otherwise? Picking up the pieces? Who would it matter to, on a planet full of dead?

"No," the doctor replied, quiet, glancing up to Sarah and catching something of that guilt creeping out the corners of her averted eyes. "No, this was a long time ago."

She took and held a breath, then looked down to the body nearest them. Almost looked like it was sleeping, if not for the rivulets of violet-red blood dried in their paths, from nose and ears and the corners of the wide, horrified eyes. _Danger, you're in danger. Run._ Sarah shook her head, dislodging the errant thought. "But they haven't… broken down."

He turned his head back to the body, curls bobbing strangely in the thin and still air. Surprisingly gentle hands turned the head from side to side, looking for other injuries. Signs of trauma; an explanation. There's nothing there. A frustrated scowl. "No, they haven't."

He didn't understand and he didn't like that, and he was looking for input – some brilliantly simple thing she'd say that would make it all make sense - but Sarah wasn't really listening, eyes losing focus subtly. Listening to another voice, one that seemed suddenly, terribly important. _You'll die. He'll die. You have to leave._

"Which, well, that is admittedly odd."

_You're going to die._

"But I think something other than time – or lack thereof – is at work here. Sarah, are you all right?"

_Everyone here dies. _

"_Sarah._ Are you listening?"

The sharpness of the tone broke through, and Sarah started, turning to look at the Doctor through the still and silent air. "Sorry, I was… just distracted. This place would be creepy even if not for…" she glanced around and trailed off, not needing to specify. "This is horrible. There's dozens of them…"

He nodded, agreeing without a word to it. "Hundreds, I'd say. Thousands even. But as I was saying, I think there's another reason they haven't decomposed. It isn't simply time delay. Look at the edges of these walls, here," he explained, standing up and walking alongside the stone structure, running one hand softly over the uneven edge, obviously broken off in whatever catastrophe caused the rest of this. Explanation and distraction, all in one convenient package. "It's smooth. Wind erosion."

"But that would take thousands of years."

"Exactly," the Doctor said with a half-smile – the most anyone could muster, surrounded by a city of dead. "That's why I like you, Sarah Jane. You don't miss a thing. Come on, let's find somewhere less disturbing to think."

There was nothing she wanted so much in the world, and they walked, trying to escape the massacre in evidence all around them – but everywhere they turned were more dead, more stone-white corpses crying silent, violet tears. Sarah shuddered away from the sight of them, settling for watching her feet instead, as they walked. Once, she glanced up at the Doctor, his expression set somewhere between curiosity and revulsion. That whispering voice, that warning and panicked impulse snaked its way back into her head then, faint and growing fainter, promising retreat - for now - but with a parting thought.

_Everyone here dies. Do you want to see him dead?_

**.o. **

_The dead the dead the walking dead the stealing and cheating and –_

_One. Seven. Sixty-two._

_- They're coming to take this from you and then you will be lost, set adrift among the stars and the fire and the thorns and crying in the dark and you will never be able to come back -_

_Twenty-five. Three. Blue red blue blue yellow. _

_- You think you've known pain but you will know blood and screams like you never have before -_

The panicked voice rose in volume, threatening to drown out the pattern. He increased his speed, chanting as if in a spell, numbers and colors and angles and positions and so many dimensions and it was like math but it was so much more beautiful. In his head he saw the pieces slotting into place, glowing threads of connection between them, wonderful beautiful symmetry and it was the picture of Everything, but the One who Panicked wouldn't let him enjoy it.

He was not allowed to question.

But he was free to resent.

* * *

**tbc.** _(c) ricebol 2007_


	3. Thistle in the Garden

He could see himself and hear himself where no one else could, and everything else was a logical leap from there. 

He didn't open his eyes often (_you don't have eyes_) but when he did ('_when' is pointless if time doesn't pass_) he could see the pattern outside as he saw it inside, an immense and beautiful fractal of everything-that-is in shimmering white and color and darkness. They could still speak to him, when his eyes were open (_You don't have eyes_, they whispered) but there was a sense of distance, as if he were hearing them down a long and ancient tunnel, a weathered and battered string with tin cans on either end. Letting in the world outside his mind quieted the chaos, but they raged and writhed and burned when he did it. It wasn't a common indulgence.

But it let him enjoy the pattern, without their honey and venom and panic distracting him. And that was worth the occasional bit of divine correction, wasn't it?

In the next instant, there was a noise from outside, a shuffling of feet. A murmur of voices, muffled by the layers of air physically between them, reaching his mind as if through wet cotton. The voices inside him, crystal clear by comparison, screamed for attention.

His eyes snapped shut.

**.o. **

"That's odd," Sarah said, pointing about fifty feet ahead of them, picking carefully between the rocks and bits of metal and chunks of torn-up concrete. She'd long since given up staring at her feet as she walked, though she still tried to let her eyes slip off of the piled bodies they still hadn't managed to get away from, let her vision roll away and on to the more practical things without taking the carnage in.

She was getting better at it. "One house, still standing in all of this rubble? What are the odds of that?"

"Not good," the Doctor agreed, expression casually thoughtful as he regarded the structure, then glanced at what was left of the building next to it, a blackened pile of stone and metal. "The burn patterns everywhere else would seem to indicate a massive firestorm, or a charged wave. One house couldn't…" he trailed off, narrowing his eyes, then reached up to settle his hat more securely on his head. Glanced to Sarah with an obviously forced smile. "Two unexplainable things instead of one. It's just a wild guess, but I'd say they were related. Come on."

**.o. **

_They're coming_, said the One who Panics, voice skidding around in his mind as if trying desperately to escape. _They'll ruin everything and oh… oh how you will cry then, how you will bleed…_

The other two voices had names, Virya seeping into his thoughts on honey-gold tendrils of twisted comfort, Sardi raking claws of wind-rustled grass across the back of his eyes, (_you don't have eyes_) but the One who Panics had never stilled long enough in his mind for introductions to be made, its presence like a wisp of burning smoke, always drifting away.

(…and those names felt familiar, so familiar sometimes but it was always on the tip of his brain, ready to slip off into infinity if he reached to hard to grab hold of it…)

_They're coming._

**.o. **_  
_

She meant to follow him, curiosity flaring, almost drowning out her revulsion at the scene around them – almost. But she'd only gotten three steps when the voice from earlier returned, quietly but building, _Danger... Danger, danger, DANGER, _rolling along faster and louder and it was like a freight train bearing down on her, the noise coming from everywhere at once as she stumbled after him, hands pressed sharply to her head.

_Death, everywhere death and destruction and danger and danger and danger..._

Sarah drilled the tips of her fingers into her temples, willing the voice to stop, to go away, to leave her be.

_He will die and you will die._

Ahead of her, the Doctor struggled up the broken stone path to the house, mindful of degraded rock's tendency to slip and give. Every noise he made, every pebble he sent skittering down the path, seemed unnaturally loud to her pounding head.

_It will HURT._

Sarah followed him up the path, careless and heedless of the treacherous footing, moving faster than she should in the circumstances – trying to run away from the roar of panic and fear eating up her perception. Distantly, she saw him put a hand to the knob of the door and the second that contact was made, like a circuit completed, the warning voice redoubled in intensity, fairly _screaming_ at her now, _DANGER DANGER DANGER DO YOU WANT TO DIE YOU WILL YOU WILL YOU WILL..._

She stumbled into the Doctor where he'd halted at the door, overwhelmed beyond any sense of location; he turned to her, concerned. The voices cut out, let her eyes focus again. And he was concerned, and his expression was uneasy and disturbed and determined and just that little bit mad, but there was nothing there to indicate that he was in any way aware of the orange-red blood running in haphazard trails from the corners of his wide blue eyes.

Sarah bit back a scream.

**.o. **

Sardi was laughing inside his mind, the sound like wind and desolation and fallow, diseased fields. _It seems that you win,_ he said, though he wasn't directly addressing the mind they held residence in. Virya, most likely. The infighting had gotten worse, these last few decades. _Our pet is very talented._

**.o. **_  
_

Sarah stumbled backwards, hands flying to her own face, half terrified for herself, half unwilling to see what she knew (_I told you so_) was going to happen (_He will bleed and he will drop and he will move no more_), and the path really was more uneven and dangerous than it looked. She started to fall.

And the Doctor was there suddenly, hands on her shoulders, steadying her in place. She blinked and looked up at him looking down at her, concern now elevated to active worry, the brim of his hat slipped back too far from the sudden movement of catching her fall. Of the blood, there was no trace, as if it'd never been. "Sarah. Something's wrong." Not even bothering with the question this time. "What is it?"

"Nothing," she said, shaking her head. Nothing was wrong. She wasn't _losing her mind_ or anything. Couldn't have that.

He studied her for a moment. He wasn't buying it. Softly: "You just barreled into me, in a panic, then nearly screamed when I turned around. Call it vain but I don't think I'm quite _that_ monstrous looking. What's going on?"

…She'd seen him pick up cuts and scratches before but never like that, never so much blood…

"Nothing's going on," she said, with no resolve whatsoever. Trying to convince herself, and completely transparent. Prideful, though.

The Doctor nodded, slightly exaggerated. "Ah." A few feet back up the path, the door still beckoned, unopened from the last attempt. "Well then, if it's all right with you, I think we should go inside and see if we can't find out what happened here." The suggestion came slowly, giving her ample opportunity to protest - just about asking her to.

She didn't. So a second and a half; a turn and three steps. His hand, only a few inches from the doorknob.

…The way the blood had just _run_, clinging to his face and twisting his concern into something blank and gruesome…

"No, don't," she interrupted sharply, nearly in a panic again. She took the steps needed to catch up at a run, hand flying to still his arm. "It's not all right. I think we're in danger here."

The Doctor looked sideways at her, mouth curling into a smile. "Of course we are. It's no fun otherwise."

A shake of her head, distracted. Not like that, not the usual day-to-day business of being chased around by purple blobs with laser guns. More than that. Sarah looked up at him, willing him to understand. She didn't want to have to say this out loud – he'd think she was cracking under the pressure, that after how much time they'd spent traveling, she'd finally lost what it took to do this.

He wasn't helping, just looking back at her curiously. She could still see the blood, if she let her eyes unfocus.

"No," she finally said, exasperated. Priorities. So he'd think her mad, fine. If it saved both their lives, that was a fair price. "Ever since we got here, I've been hearing a voice. Telling me how much danger we're in. How we're both going to die. When you turned around up there, you looked like…"

His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing, waiting for her to finish.

"… like them. Like the bodies. All… bloody."

The Doctor blinked in surprise, ran one hand over his face. It came away clean. No real danger then, at least, but if it'd been a hallucination… "Not anymore?"

"No, just for a moment."

He looked at her sharply then, partly sympathetic, partly just taken aback, but there was some irritation mixed in there too. "Why didn't you say so earlier, about the voices?"

Hands ran through dark, disheveled hair, and Sarah made a short and frustrated noise, grinning painfully in self-conscious embarrassment. "Because I thought I was going mad! And I thought you'd…"

The Doctor sighed loudly, reaching one arm out to gather around her shoulders, anticipating and effectively cutting her off. "Think you were mad, too? Never, Sarah. What I'd be likely to think, in all honestly," and a smile lit up here, toothy and sly. "…is that there's some sort of psychic warding signal in the vicinity."

**.o. **

_Or not_, came the triumphant snicker. Virya did not respond; too busy throwing a minor tantrum, kicking round the corners of his mind. The One who Panics fell into a litany of blood and fear and it pounded in on him, straining the logical confines of the pattern itself. He shielded it as best he could, but he didn't know what else to do; he could not defy them outright and if any of them – even the irrational and unthinking babbler of street corner doomsday stories – felt it was right that the pattern be destroyed and he start over, that was what was to be.

_When they come in here,_ Virya finally said, having pulled herself together enough to sound warm and golden again, trustworthy, so very trustworthy. _They will have Searchers' eyes. If they find you, you will need to destroy them. Can you do that?_

In the darkness, somewhere behind his eyes (_You don't have eyes_), he nodded.

* * *

**tbc. **_(c) ricebol 2007_**  
**


	4. Disappear

The Doctor sat on the edge of a broken piece of rock, fingers rubbing lightly at his temples as if to take the edge off a tension headache, expression locked in concentration. "Drop them just enough," he muttered, "Enough to see, and..."

_Here in the dark, hiding in the warp and weft, alone for so long among the dead and dreaming – _

_This is not your place, it is ours, we keep the web and the web brings only pain – _

_A hundred hours, a hundred years and the wind is ours and it shapes this world – _

_Stay away! Only death waits for you here, death for those you care for, death for you and it will hurt – _

He winced, expression creasing into something approaching fear. Anxiety. A few separate overlapping voices, he observed objectively, trying to keep his own out of the mix, trying to maintain distance. He felt himself stumble, rushed to bring his mental shields back up – came free from the signal's grip with a start.

Sarah sat on a stone across from him, massaging her own forehead. Now that she knew what the voice was, she seemed better able to block out its effects on her emotional state – ignore it, like you would the jibing of a bully whose tricks had grown old. "So," she said, watching him blink back to awareness. "What's the verdict? Am I going mad?"

"Not at all." The Doctor shook his head lightly, the words still running around his head, clinging with unexpected tenacity. Without external reinforcement, they'd fade, but in the meantime, it was an irritant. His eyes lifted to meet Sarah's, suddenly very bright and sharp and insistent. "How many voices do you hear?"

The sun was getting high, and for all the city ruins and refuse of life once lived here, this place was still essentially a desert. Sarah rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. "Just the one."

A thoughtful frown. "Rambling on about death and danger you said. Hmm." He drummed his fingers on a knee for a moment, then reached to pull his hat free. Getting warm, yes, even for him. "And would you say," he asked, gesturing with the hat-hand vaguely in Sarah's direction, "That it was speaking in complete thoughts, or more just disjointed nonsense?"

"You're one to talk about speaking in disjointed nonsense," A teasing grin, halfway at least, best she can manage in the circumstances. "It was, though. All over the place really. I'd say it needs to get its head on straight, except it hasn't got one. Why, were you getting complete sentences?"

_-the dark, hiding in the warp and weft-_

He shook himself again. Very sticky thoughts, all covered in barbs and hooks. Latching on. "Yes, very eloquent. Almost poetic in places. And not all of it aimed at keeping us away, I'd say, since only the one voice was blatantly a warning. The rest were more like… background noise."

-_the wind is ours and it shapes this world, shapes it to our design and when the design is complete- _

The Doctor blinked, then stood up in a rush. That was… unusual. Clinging, lingering thoughts after a mental contact, that was one thing. But that one continued beyond where he'd cut it off. The voices were still finding a way in - he'd sprung a leak. Not a comforting thought.

Sarah stood up too, still holding her head with one hand, but no longer so disoriented, unlikely to break into a panic. "Why am I getting it in fragments then?" she asked, taking a tentative step back up the path, towards the intact building once again.

"Resonance field. It's a clever way to set it up, terribly efficient, but not without faults – someone with stronger inherent psychic ability will get better reception, but is also more likely to have active shielding." He tapped the side of his head lightly, then replaced the hat. "You only heard a voice - without shields, I'd probably be a wobbling wreck of..." Blink. "...what's something that wobbles?"

"Jelly?" Sarah supplied helpfully.

The Doctor looked at her narrowly, humor dancing just behind the reproach. "Well yes, of course _jelly_. I was hoping for something a little more esoteric."

"Sorry," she said, tone at once sharp and affectionate. "Next time I'm called on to come up with 'something that wobbles' to adequately describe your theoretical mental state, I'll try to be more creative."

The Doctor didn't reply. Words – words in voices that weren't his – snaked through his mind, reminding him in uncomfortable clarity that his shields weren't what they had once been. He didn't say a word about it, reaching for the doorknob.

**.o.**

A sound. A door opening? He wasn't exactly sure; it'd been so long since he'd heard anything like it. There was an inrush of light to his senses, like the sun falling over closed eyes (_eyes?_) and the voices inside went dead silent. Even the panicked babbling trailed off, waiting. Expecting.

He supposed he was sitting, in some abstract, mental-projection sort of way. He didn't move, as the voices from outside became clearer, whispered syllables dropping heavily into the dust and shadows.

They were nervous, unsure. Treading carefully. Virya was right, he realized. They were coming for him.

**.o.**

They were both half-expecting some new display of dramatics or cracked hallucinations when the Doctor eased the door open on old and rusted hinges, but there was nothing – just silence, as the voices seemed to retreat back into their cracks and crevasses. Hiding.

There was definitely something hiding here.

Shadows enough to conceal it, too. Dust in incredible volume. No bodies in here, which made for a nice break, all things considered. The Doctor treaded in carefully, quiet – it made no sense, after the ruckus the door had made, but there was a deep intuition at work here. Sarah followed his lead, silent.

Grey was the best word he could think of to describe this place – not simply dark or shadowed, but desaturated. Murky. Hard to focus through, with no contrasty edges for the eyes to lock onto. Still, he looked – first from their position by the door and then, as they took a few more steps into the room, more thoroughly. There was a tremendously expectant feeling, as if the room itself were holding its breath.

**.o.**

_They're going to find you_, came the Panic, squeaking out like the first few drops of water from a dam's faint faultline. The others were fast, so very fast, papering over the hole and silencing their cohort with a cooperation and efficiency he'd never seen in them – perhaps silence was one path to many outcomes, or perhaps they were merely as frustrated with that extra, irrational voice as he was.

... he wasn't. Not allowed to be.

They didn't notice the slip.

He felt a hum starting to build in the back of his mind, quiet but getting louder. It felt like the first time, when he'd vanished - when he'd died. He'd become invisible and so everyone else had disappeared to him and that was fine, that was how he'd come to understand it. But why was it happening again?

It felt like a great and terrible power, slipping dangerously into a runaway condition. It felt like being alive, consciousness riding just back behind the eyes again(_you DO NOT have eyes_) like it used to, such a long time ago. It felt like so many things it couldn't possibly be.

He felt the Others, stepping through the room. Heard them, their voices hushed and nonsensical, gibberish. Twenty feet away.

**.o.**

The Doctor paused mid-step, a chilled, buzzing feeling working its way up his spine, collecting ominously at the base of his skull. "Do you feel that?" A whisper, towards Sarah, still too loud. Far too loud.

She glanced over to him. "No... what is it? The voice has stopped..."

He winced at her voice, regretting having asked the second after he did so, still under a strange compulsion to minimize the noise of their presence. A gesture with his hand for her to be silent. Thirty seconds, counted out in his head in perfect precision, and they didn't move.

Then, slowly, he gazed around the room- and found his eyes drawn, over and over again, to the far corner. There was nothing there that he could really _see_, but...

He gestured Sarah closer, so that he could risk a whisper. She was holding up surprisingly well, given how disturbing this place had been so far – but then, might be he was only ready to jump out of his skin due to feeling like a lightning rod in an electrical storm. What _was_ that humming? "Corner over there. Do you see anything?"

Quietly, "No. Just some scraps, and wood. But it feels like..."

The prompt was instantaneous: "Like what?"

"Like I _should_ be seeing something there, but it's just... absent."

Otherwise completely still, the Doctor raised one hand to her shoulder. "Noticing the absence. That sounds about right - some sort of perception field. Sarah, stay here."

**.o.**

Virya's voice was quiet, when it came – but he was immediately stronger, more coherent, ready to do whatever it was she asked. So much easier than making his own choices. So much easier to sit and do their work, and feel loved – or at least needed.

So much easier to believe in something he knew existed, rather than trying to summon up belief in himself.

So much easier to not be alone.

These feelings came in a rush, simple, uncomplicated, every time they left him and then returned. They took advantage of it, and he knew that. He didn't really care. All he cared about was the pattern. So when Virya came to him, quietly, and told him it was time to make the Others disappear, his only question was whether he'd be allowed to go back to working on it once this was over.

_Yes. You will._

That was good.

**.o.**

One step towards the corner, another. Quiet, and cautious, the Doctor left Sarah back in the middle of the room, confident now that there were no mundane monsters waiting to spring out on her from behind ruined furniture and draperies. The threat was there, in front of him.

The buzzing was getting stronger now, becoming decidedly uncomfortable. It was familiar, but he couldn't place it, and it was a very real hindrance, constricting his breath and fogging the back of his mind where all the important leaps of intuition were made.

He hunkered down just in front of the corner of the room, squinting into the empty space, thinking.

And realized, too late, exactly how apt the lightning rod metaphor had been.

**.o.**

_Now,_ soothed the kindest of his gods. _Do it now._

His eyes snapped open.

**.o.**

For just a second, they caught a flickering glimpse of a small, reptilian being hunched over itself, curled into the corner, eyes wide open and empty and endless.

Then the world went white.

* * *

**tbc.** _(c) ricebol 2007 _


	5. Whiteout

The Timelord child sits in the hall, outside the Academy Head's room – in trouble again, and for no good reason really, he rubs at his eyes and tries to look as uncaring and nonchalant as he can when the door swings open and he is regarded by disdainful and impatient eyes. Too different, too full of dangerous ideas. He is alone.

The Human child sits in detention, impolitely tapping her fingers on the desk in a drumbeat of boredom, staring out the window. Impertinent and presumptuous, they said, full of unrealistic goals. Even at this age, they are disappointed that her dreams involve more than a husband and a handful of children. She is alone.

The Paln child sits in the classroom, sequestered at the corner table, studiously ignoring and being ignored. Too special, too strange, and no one with any idea what to do with him. Afraid. He reads a book, turning the pages without his hands – just to spite them, in some small childish way. He is alone.

Somewhere in the white, they fall into one another.

**.o.**

There's something instinctually comforting about falling through nothing, cushioned by other minds – even if only one is familiar, and even if you know better than to think that because something feels safe, it is. _Psychokinetic containment field_, he thinks disjointedly. _That may just have been a mistake._ He feels the question-mark somewhere nearby, recognizes its source immediately, but doesn't offer further commentary. Not until he's sure. Not until he has some idea – even an inkling – as to how to get them out of this.

**.o.**

She's falling and falling, and there's a feeling in there reminiscent of nausea, but it's a hard one to pin down without a body to feel it in. She flails out in any way she can, trying to grab onto something familiar, something she can put her mind around that's more substantive than the endless, painful whiteness.

She hears his voice suddenly, from somewhere nearby. As usual, it makes no sense, and not so much as usual, he isn't interested in explaining.

But it's something to cling to, something that halts the descent.

**.o.**

A glowing pattern shimmers into existence, something like a fractal but infinitely more complex, more dimensions than can really be understood in a three-dimensional universe, folding in on itself impossibly. Tendrils of red and blue and white and a thousand other gradients of color interlock with mechanical precision – and snap into place all around them, the pattern still a work in progress.

It's familiar.

It's familiar but it's not immediately identifying itself, just a sensation of almost-there tickling at their collective consciousness, like a wordless tune stuck maddeningly in the back of the mind, the melody of time and life and universe and what do senses matter here, where you can hear colors and feel thoughts? It is still familiar, and important.

But not offering up its identity.

It swirls and swings out in wide arcs, bits of it passing through them and finding ground there, buzzing and vaguely uncomfortable. There are hundreds of such ground points visible – thousands, even, stretching to where the horizon would be if the word had any meaning in a mindspace.

**.o.**

There are flashes, in the white.

The reptilian Paln going about their daily lives, a quiet murmuring background hum sliding up into the silent cracks between moments, the gentle earmark of a society half-gone to mental communications – empathic, words still required only for precision and specificity, quiet modifiers of intent.

A city rising out of the dust, faster than it should, time-lapse hindsight as the sky flickers past. Engineering, construction, mechanics – cold disciplines that they do not enjoy or excel at, but they are tired of living in the sand and the heat, chasing the night's shadows from outcropping to outcropping, and needs must.

The sun in the bowl of purple sky, flaring through a layer of glass, too bright to look straight into its heart but there's always someone, always eyes willing to burn in the brilliance while everyone else ducks and looks away.

Voices behind a closed door, in turns angry and then pleading. The feeling of something ending. Say goodbye to your friends, you won't see them again. Better places, better opportunities. So talented, so special. Dangerous. Belong. Jump the barricades. Dragged back - respect and awe and awards and special classes and endless questions and things ending. Always something ending.

**.o.**

The fall resumes, from this point out, vertigo and despair and spiraling. Physical, mental, metaphorical, it's all the same in the white, and there's little point in the differentiation. Gravity is a concept even the inner mind can understand, and in this context, the descent is inevitable.

**.o.**

The whispers start in and they sound like sprites or angels at first, spinning silver and golden spells with their words. A nudge in one direction or another. Conscience. Imagination. The other side of internal conversations, questions and answers he doesn't realize he has. The shine in his own mind; the unclouded part of him that can accomplish greatness, the whispers of self assurance in the dark and the howls of ego in the light of day.

Then they start to split.

They start to go sour. Make demands. Make claims to divinity, even. They were never just his own internal voices, and they insist that he knows that. They've come to him, out of all the others. He's been chosen. And people have always told him how special he is, haven't they? But they have _made_ him special.

Self-assurance crumbles. Without his shine, without something inside to make him worthy, he has little else to believe in. They, dancing now on the periphery of vision and just out of reach, make acceptable substitutes.

**.o.**

He grows older, and inherits a mean streak, and acts out, as adolescents are wont to do. Power hums in the back of his mind and the voices whisper, rustling and dripping and the ideas they put in his mind are lovely and compelling, and he knows by now that he's being used, but there isn't enough left of him to care.

Respect and awe turn to shuffling, scattered fear until one day, there's white and white and white and no one left to be afraid of him.

**.o.**

The white came from inside of him- all the white does. He knows that now, with the quivering mental feel of an apology he can barely muster.

It's not that they died, after all. It's that _he_ died. That's why he cannot see them anymore.

**.o.**

He didn't kill them.

**.o.**

He didn't kill them because his voices say so, and even the vaguest supposition that they might just be lying, transmitted lightly into the white by the interlopers, sends him into a shaking, cold fit.

They wouldn't lie. There's no reason for them to lie. They've promised him peace, and rest, and before that they promised him power and solitude, and before that they made the childish, wafer thin promises that one day, life would be better. What he has needed most, they found for him, over and over. Except that life didn't honestly seem any better, and then he died and the promise no longer matters but that _doesn't mean anything_ and-

They wouldn't.

He clings to the pattern all around them, as lost as the outsiders for something real. The world shudders.

**.o.**

The bottom drops out. It is no longer a gradual descent on papered wings, but the brutal fear and adrenaline mind-death of freefall. The show's over and the lights start to fade, dimming the whiteness as they tumble through it, consciousness colliding and scrabbling together for a handhold and there's something that feels warm and slippery and red in the space between them. The Doctor just barely manages to catch hold of Sarah's panicking mind as it slips into the depths, gripless, dragging them down and down and down.

* * *

**tbc.** _(c) ricebol 2007 _


	6. Of Familiar Places

_AN: Apologies for how long this took - for a long time I couldn't figure out in what context I wanted to handle the mental landscape in this part, and this all suddenly popped into my head today._

* * *

It was a fall within a fall. 

**.o. **

Time seemed to compress and stretch and twitch lightly in place. The minute hand shuddered forward, sliding hesitantly up against the ten. There was only one set of eyes watching it; the others were focused downwards, on the scraps of paper laid over desks, on the marks made as pencils scrabbled over them, filling in answers to insignificant questions. Too easy, finished too fast, said the eyes watching the clock.

It couldn't be constant, Sarah figured, fingering the stubby end of the pencil, eyes fixed on the timepiece. It didn't always pass at the same rate. Something about observation, or context, shifted its speed. What did that mean?

She didn't know. She was only seven, after all. Someday, some grownup would explain it to her, when she found one that would listen and not just dismiss it as fancy. But she knew this today, sitting here in the dying end of Maths class: Time was not a constant.

Sarah felt a wash of warmth suddenly, like a murmur of approval unvoiced but somehow still perceived. She looked down from the clock, dark hair bobbing around her face. Where did that come from? She fiddled with the corner of the test sheet, antsy and unsettled. Glanced at the other students, then up towards the teacher sitting at his desk, marking homework papers. Narrowed her eyes.

He was awfully funny-looking, she decided. Why hadn't she noticed that earlier? Between the hair and the clothes, she decided that he looked a little like a clown. Not a scary one, though. Familiar, like a favorite uncle, which didn't make a lot of sense since school had only been in session for a few weeks now. She decided that she liked him.

He looked up and met her stare suddenly, something like sadness ringing in the endless blue of his eyes. And like he had something he wanted to say, but physically couldn't manage it.

_Well, it's only a memory after all,_ a voice said in her mind suddenly, and Sarah's breath caught. It was coming from the same place her own thoughts came from, but it didn't sound like her at all. Wasn't it only crazy people, like the funny man on the street across from the park with all the cardboard signs, who heard voices in their heads? _You've put me inside it but it's already happened, so there's not a great deal I can do from here. You have to-_

Sarah put her hands over her ears and refused to listen. Somewhere in there he came over and asked if she was done with the test, all curls and trailing scarf, and she must have nodded because the sheet disappeared, but she wasn't sure – wasn't paying attention. Too busy trying to block out the voice. Later, this would be the teacher that would notice her intelligence, have her plucked out of mediocrity and pushed ahead a class or two. Make school half-livable for her. She remembered him looking different.

On the wall, the clock hand continued its slow plodding towards noon.

**.o. **

She was on holiday with her family, down on the coast, and she'd spent all day picking over the craggy, rocky shoreline. Her bare feet were covered in cuts and scrapes but she was free of the broken neck her mother had predicted. Why did parents make such gruesome prognostications, she wondered? 'Prognostication' was a word she'd learned recently, and was one of her new favorites, but really, all words were lovely. 'Strong future as a writer', the teachers all said.

Just ahead, there was a dock jutting crookedly out into the water, grey water and grey sky and grey, time-battered wood. A figure sat hunched on the pier, wrapped in color, a fishing line dangling carelessly out into the water below.

Sarah stopped. Her parents had told her not to talk to strangers, but she'd been a _kid_ then. Now she was twelve – nearly an adult! She shook herself and scrabbled over the last few rocks, then stepped out onto the dock, taking careful steps over towards the funny-looking fisherman. Who wore a scarf to the water, anyway? "What're you trying to catch?"

He looked up at her, expression open and gentle, and carrying a mad glint of humor. Curls bobbed lightly around his head. "Dock fish," he replied, resettling the fishing rod in his hands.

Sarah squinted, looking down into the water. "I don't think there _are_ any fish that live under docks."

"Well, that might explain my poor luck," the fisherman grinned, toothy and wide, flicking the line a bit further out.

She thought about this for a minute, then took a few steps and resolutely sat down on the edge of the dock, a foot or two down from him. "Are you a..." She paused. She'd meant to ask if he was a boatman, but for some reason she kept thinking of school, five or six years ago. He looked familiar. "Are you a teacher? Or … or a doctor?"

Where had _that_ come from?

_Very good, Sarah. You're starting to remember. _

"No, love. Just a fisherman. And not a very good one, or so my wife says. It's a secret, but," and he leaned in a bit, as if imparting some great universal truth, "I actually agree with her."

_Don't listen to him. Or... us, I suppose. You had that one right on the nose._

The voice was back. Why was it back now, after all this time? Who was it, and what was it trying to tell her?

"Doesn't your scarf get wet?" she asked suddenly, eying the cumbersome garment. The scene froze around her for a moment, then shuddered, as if several frames had been cut out. He didn't reply. There was no proper response in her memory – because of course, she hadn't asked anything close to that, the first time through.

_Sarah, I need you to remember. There's a great deal at stake. You have to trust me._

"I should get back to my family," she said, vaguely agitated, trying not to show it. Because she wasn't sure, now, whether she should be trying to ignore the voice or not. Because it was comforting, on some level. Because she _wanted_ to trust it, and that scared her a little. Distracted - what had distracted her the first time through? – by these thoughts, she stood up too hurriedly, slipped on a patch of seaweed-covered, damp wood. It all happened so very, very quickly. She smacked her head against the plank on her way down, knocked herself giddy as she slipped down into the water with a deafening splash.

And she sank.

And there was an arm catching itself around hers, a hand gripping onto her jacket, jerking her to a stop and pulling her sharply upwards to roll, senseless, onto the wood planking. Air was such a luxury, she realized, gasping like a fish on the dock. Dock fish. The joke was almost funny now, and the gasping turned to unhinged laughter as she rolled onto her back to look at her sad, sopping drenched rescuer, concern writ all over his face.

Guess the scarf does get wet, after all.

"Come on," he said, shambling to his feet, helping her to hers by one hand. "Let's get you back where you belong."

_Yes, Sarah. Come back to where you belong._

**.o. **_  
_

It was summer, a beautiful cloudless day with the sun at its zenith, the grass a perfectly soft and uniform abstraction of the pitted, cow-chewed reality. The next branch was just a tiny bit out of reach, but Sarah was determined to make it on her own. This was a rite of passage, in a way. Only an inch or two more, and she would have it –

- she remembered this now, as she found herself falling and falling, the ground rising up with unforgiving swiftness and the softness of the grass an insubstantial comfort for the rock-hard earth she knew lurked just underneath and –

- she was caught. Sort of. Not swept out of the sky with ethereal grace, but supported and stumbling and it was supposed to be one of her friends who'd thrown himself under her, not so much catching her as breaking her fall. But it was him again, overdressed in the midday sun, a ghost of other summers.

"You've always been here," she half-stated, half-accused, breaking the momentum of the memory like no other player in it could. No one spoke or moved. The breeze stilled in the leaves above.

He steadied her firmly on her feet but didn't step back, his imposing height out of place amongst these awkward and gangly teenagers. His hand settled on her shoulder. _Only this time through, Sarah. You managed the first time well enough on your own._

A spark of familiarity, passing in the contact. Something in the inflection of the voice, connected with the face hovering, full of concern, so near by. The way he said her name. Something triggered in her mind in a burst of bright blue and the images came as if through a breached dam – dinosaurs and robots and creatures from her imagination, metal men and metal monsters, a mob of mutated people on the plains of an ancient, alien world, a tight space smelling of steel and claustrophobia, a great and depressing blackness giving way to a blurry hodgepodge monstrosity raging towards her...

It was all she could do to catch her breath in a startled gasp, but she remembered.

Distantly, this memory of the summer day in the trees picked up again and played out around her, words and actions from a lifetime ago, continuing on autopilot. She remembered everything now, all in a flash, and had more important things to do. _...Doctor?_

_Yes, Sarah. Finally. What do you remember?_

_We crashed. In the... ruins? The ruins. And there was someone in the corner of the room and... _

_And what?_

_White. Just white._

_We're still there. You've retreated into your safest memories- the ones where there was someone to catch you, to save you. But you're not a child anymore. You can save yourself now. You have to leave._

A short burst of mental laughter, no humor in it. _And go where? Back into the white? _

A flustered quality crept into the mental voice. _What? Of course not._ _Back to the real world._ _You aren't psychically sensitive, Sarah. You were done no physical injury by that blast. You're only trapped here because you don't know how to leave._

_But... you are,_ she thought back at him, a white-hot flare of concern filling the mental line with static as the implications of what he's said sink in. _Sensitive. Are you hur-_

She cut herself off, and there was no response for a moment. Then a brushing-away, a dismissal. _I can give you a foot-up, show you the way out. You'll be fine._

_But-_

_Sarah._ The voice was stern, suddenly- underwritten with so much bare worry and affection it almost hurt to hear it, but uncompromising. _You have to trust me. We can do nothing from inside. Once you're out, well,__then_ _you can shut down the containment field, can't you? _A pause, considering. _'Can' isn't really a strong enough word. 'Should' is more the size of it. The lives of an entire society are at stake._

_I'm more worried about yours._

Another brushing-away, the thought deflected out into the chaotic cloud surrounding their minds. _Go on then. Allez-oop and all that._

She wasn't ready, not really, and what he'd said hadn't made much sense – a society? What society? What was she rushing into, here? Could she handle it? – but if trust was all he needed, then he had it, always and without question. The memory had continued onward and he had her foot braced in his hands; he hoisted her back towards the branch in one motion, exactly as she remembered so many years ago. There was the customary headrush of defying gravity and then a strange rushing, bubbling feeling, like the rise through water to the surface, the last few feet a dizzying blur of light and motion before breaking through to the air –

**.o. **

A burst of light, a cloud of static ringing in her mind like a data feed, encoded, unintelligible -

**.o. **

And she found herself there, in the ruins of the ruins, the building's top and most of its walls now sheared away – gasping for air, impoverished lungs clenching and binding and screaming for oxygen. She remembered, in bursts of white against her slowly clearing vision – the empty place, and the pattern, and the containment field and they were one and the same, weren't they? And the Doctor, he'd gotten her out, and he'd had to stay behind, and he'd told her to break the containment field and he-

And he was lying just a meter or two in front of her, still and white as stone, red slickness settled into the lines of his face. Just like all the others, visible now where they lay in the streets. Bodies to the horizon.

Oh god.

_Everyone dies here..._

"Wasn't a dream,' she rambled to herself, trying to affirm it, as she pulled herself to her hands and knees and scrambled over to him. It couldn't have been a dream. He was there. It had to be real.

But maybe it hadn't been. Maybe it _had_ been a dream. Maybe – no. Just no.

Her fingers shook as she reached to touch the blood; they came away red, and she could sense the walls of shock coming down around her mind as she looked at it, felt the sticky tack of it between her finger and thumb. Not an illusion this time. Not a hallucination or a warning. The time for warnings had long since passed.

Maybe-

_No._

Shoving aside the panic, Sarah pressed her shaking, bloodied fingers under the line of his jaw, searching for that familiar double-thrum, or even just one, or a trace of warmth, or _any_ sign that the Doctor was still in there somewhere. But he was colder even than his normal chill, and under her fingertips, not a thing stirred.

There was nothing.

**.o. **

_And now,_ he thought to himself, somewhere in the lonely, endless white, _it's my turn to have faith in you._

* * *

**tbc.** _(c) ricebol 2007  
_


	7. Within, Without

_AN: Some new-series continuity thrown in here. Have fun._

* * *

There was nothing – no sign of life, no stirring of motion. No offhanded joke about the mistake she was always making, thinking him dead. Nothing at all.

...wait.

There. One tiny, barely perceptible pulsebeat. Twenty seconds later, its lazy companion. Then, again and as before, nothing. Sarah felt hope rise to crowd out the panic, balloon its way into her heart and mind - irrational hope perhaps, but in the ruins of a dead world, surrounded by marble corpses and the dust of an ancient destruction, she was willing to let it take hold. Anything to stave off believing the evidence of her eyes.

She stayed as she was for several minutes more, only relenting to sit back on her heels when she'd felt another set of the strange, desperately slow heartbeats and knew for a fact that she hadn't imagined it the first time. Tearing her eyes from the still form, she turned her head to look out at the streets now open in front of her, the bodies lying wherever they fell...

... there was life here. There was still life in the Doctor, at least. She knew that, or thought she did. Had to believe it. Maybe the others...

_The lives of an entire society..._

Sarah felt her mouth fall open in shock. The realization was huge – the implications greater. Pulling herself to her feet, she crossed to the nearest of the aliens and kneeled down next to it, considering. "Don't know where you fellows keep your major arteries," she murmured, dropping her ear to the creature's chest. "But you've probably got your heart in the same place, right? Though knowing my luck, it's probably in your elbow." What was that someone had said, about making light against the darkness?

A minute passed, then another. Then, finally, there it was – a single beat in the silence. Sarah sat back up slowly, looking out over this corner of the ruined world – not full of corpses. Full of sleepers. "They're alive," she said, not sure exactly who she was speaking to but needing to voice it aloud. "They're _all alive."_

**.o.**

_Where did she go?_ came the question, irritated and demanding. It had no location per say; it came from everywhere, permeating the whiteness.

He turned around to face the perception of it, regardless. It felt like something sneaking up from behind – and it was curious that the mental projection of his body still remained, after the trappings of the memories had fallen away. How strong Sarah's mind had been, to imprint the visual impression of him so tenaciously into the vocabulary of this mindscape. _I sent her back out, _he thought, and his projection smiled, smug. Deliberately so. _Back to the waking world? Bit beyond your reach, I'd think._

_Not beyond our pet's. _A second voice, smoother and less immediately threatening, but dangerous all the same. _He will deliver her back to us._

Hands settling into the pockets of his jacket, the Doctor appeared to think about this, then shook his head dismissively. _I don't think so. You underestimate her._

The first voice again, disdain dripping. _I believe you OVERestimate her._

_Oh, no. _The grin had transmuted into a look of disbelief, eyes wide. _Never. Sarah is many things, but 'overestimated' isn't often among them. _

_We'll-_

_A better question is,_ the Doctor interrupted, clearly bored with this tedium of overblown threats, _why exactly do you need her, or me? Or any of these people? Conquest, colonization? Something more unconventional? Our mental energy, perhaps?_

For a long time, there was no response.

**.o.**

Okay. So they were all alive. More importantly to her, and yes it was terribly selfish but she'd berate herself for it later, the Doctor was alive. That knowledge was enough, for now – enough to let her focus on what she'd been sent back to do. Shut down the mental containment field. She imagined it like a physical barrier, a sort of electrified fence- one could break through it easily enough once the power was cut off. Granted, that left her no wiser as to exactly how to proceed. Was this being mechanically generated? Controlled by some external intelligence with delusions of godhood?

...or a shaking, terrified lizard in the corner? Sarah blinked. How had she forgotten about him?

Cautiously, she stepped over to where he sat shivering, clutching at his knees, eyes wide open and less empty than they'd seemed just before the white. The walls were gone, torn down by his attack. He wasn't alone anymore – and his company? His own fallen people.

He was realizing what he'd done.

Sarah didn't know how she knew this – the knowledge seemed to rise full-formed out of that bank of static that was still rolling around the back of her mind, the one that had been there since she'd woken up. She knew what he was seeing, what he was feeling, and knew that at that moment, everything had changed. She crouched down, regarded him carefully. "Can you hear me?"

"Dead," he replied, starting to shake harder. "Dead, dead, dead dead dead dead all dead…"

"No," she said, quietly, entreating. "Just sleeping. But you can wake them up. Wouldn't you like to do that?"

**.o.**

_No reply? Hit that one a little too close, did I? Good._

The Doctor started walking, though the action had little meaning in the haze of nothingness. He was confident that the voices would follow him; they felt threatened, and would want to keep an eye on the threat. The purple-blue tendril from earlier had reappeared, grounding itself eerily through him and connecting him to the greater pattern, invisible from where he stood; his mental projection was starting to go transparent and strange. _So you have this psychic field, absorbing mental energy from every poor fool you manage to catch in your little web. Spider and the fly, a game older than time. But why? What are you trying to accomplish?_

Silence. He could feel them there, annoyance and suspicion and resentment, but they didn't say a word.

_And why,_ he asked finally, turning on his heels- exasperated by the lack of response, and loud, _did you pull my ship out of the vortex?_

_We did not, _came the immediate and unexpected response.

**.o.**

"Noo, out of my head. Head. _Out._" The huddled reptile clawed at the top of his skull, ducking his head away from Sarah's suggestion. Didn't close his eyes. Couldn't, now that he'd seen the truth. "Only they can be in my head, you're not allowed, you can't turn me against them they are good they give me everything…"

He stopped, and seemed to be listening for something, waiting. Expectant. But nothing came, in the end.

"Test. Testing me. Always testing. The pattern's all that matters."

Sarah stepped back, watching the creature rocking itself back and forth, clutching its head. Looked over to the Doctor, inert, defenseless, depending on her. Out at the people she knew now to be alive, waiting in the stillness for someone to come along and save them, pull them from that forever, painful whiteness. She made a sharp, frustrated noise, leaning against one of the standing support beams, pinching the bridge of her nose. She could do this, even alone. She just didn't have enough information. Ask the right questions.

"Why does the pattern matter?" she asked suddenly, louder than she intended, looking up from her own frustrations.

She watched him blink, and stop rocking, and look up at her, uncomprehending. At first she thought he wasn't going to answer.

Then: "Because... it's _beautiful_."

**.o.**

The Doctor blinked. He hadn't been expecting an answer at all, much less that specific answer. _Then who did? The boy?_

_No. _The gentler, more cajoling voice. _We would know. We are in control of him. We are only trying to get home._

_You're in control of everything here... and of course you could simply be lying, but let's leave that aside for now... so you would be aware of any sentience pulling nasty tricks with temporal dynamics. It's not a subtle thing, after all. Unless..._ The fade was getting worse; looking down at himself, there was very little he could still see. _Ahh! Unless it wasn't a mind that did it. _

And he set off in one direction again. Despite the uniformity of the landscape, there was a feeling of coming up upon a cliff, of seeing something vast and great coming into view below, a piece at a time. The rest of the pattern, spidering across the white, interconnections singing and crying in colors and light.

He recognized it, now. The song of everything. The pattern buzzing and vibrating with the energy that connected up the universe. It changed as he watched, sweeping in on itself, possibilities upon ideas upon chance upon chaos upon the forever-branching path of time. What was left of his eyes widened. He hadn't seen anything like this since he was a child, and it hadn't been easy then.

It was like looking into the Schism.

**.o.**

_Wonderful,_ Sarah thought harshly, biting back a shout of frustration. An artist. How do you argue aesthetics? "Life is beautiful too, you know," she attempted lamely, knowing the cliché for what it is but not much else was coming to mind, and she had to say _something._

"No no no, life is ugly. Everything hurts and everyone goes away. It's... messy and ugly and it hurts and they hurt and they hurt you and the pattern doesn't care if I'm different..." The boy resumed rocking, and a low, keening sound made its way from his throat, a plea or a lament.

Everyone goes away…

Sarah sighed harshly and shudderingly, risking another glance back to her own gone-away friend. "People go away, but sometimes they can come back. If you let them."

Silence. Behind those dull eyes were memories of better times and better days, of summers gone and friends sent into darkness. Of the sun, brilliant, shining through the glass ceiling of his home, burning into him the feeling of something better, something greater. The safer days, the stable life, before he was differentspecialstrange. Everyone retreats to the same havens, in the end.

Hesitant, the voice meandered its way across the room. "How do you let them?"

**.o.**

_Where do you come from? What planet? _The Doctor asked, not looking away from the twisting and writhing mass of light. The question was flat and uninflected, and terribly, terribly serious.

_We cannot say._

Irritation, attention still glued below. _What do you mean, you can't say? That's the most ridiculous load of poppycock-_

_We... do not know._

Again, unexpected, but that seemed to be the order of the day. He projected towards his idea of 'where' they were and focused in on the minds, trying to feel out their structure and get a sense of their probable origin. It was impolite at best, but this had just become that much more serious. And they recoiled, pulling into themselves after he'd gotten only a glimpse, but even that glimpse was confusing. _That doesn't make any sense... _

A third voice broke in suddenly, fairly screaming in the echoey white space. _Hurry hurry he's going to destroy it all our work all our efforts we will die we will all die there's no time he's weak he's weak he's weak..._

And like that the voices were gone, leaving him alone, standing before a child's multi-dimensional drawing of the great harmonic frequency of the universe. Slowly evaporating into the white.

**.o.**

"By letting go," Sarah said softly, crouching beside the boy and reaching for his shoulder. The static buzzed again in her mind and another fact or two became obvious, like pieces of a puzzle slotting themselves into place. "You've been using them, building your pattern with them. And it _is _beautiful to look at. But you're killing them – all of them, to maintain it. That's not right. It isn't beautiful at all."

Silence. For a moment, she thought she'd won; she bit her lip, waiting. But it could never be that easy. She watched, horrified, as he spasmed under her grip and fell forward onto his side, shaking and crying and all but screaming out apologies to his angels and his gods.

"No, no please, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm _sorry_ I'll only do what you say I won't listen to her I'm sorry I'll _do what you say forever_..."

* * *

**tbc.**_ (c) ricebol 2007  
_


End file.
